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This tiny implant is only 8mm wide, but it contains enough nanotechnology to detect heart damage that would otherwise go unnoticed. Heart attacks and cancer account for nearly half of all deaths in the United States – they’re the two biggest killers walking the streets, but MIT isn’t afraid. Michael Cima and his team developed an implantable sensor that uses antibodies attached to nanoparticles to detect cancer related biomarkers. In 2009 Cima showed that he could implant these devices into human tumors in mice and then ‘read’ the cancer growth using MRI. No biopsies need. Over the past few years, Cima and his team have adapted their work to create a very similar device that measures biomarkers related to heart damage. This month they published work in Nature that demonstrated how their implant could detect heart attacks in mice. Watch Cima discuss some of the potential of this technology in the video below. While these implants aren’t ready for the clinic (Cima thinks 5 years for some applications) they are just too cool to ignore. Once fully realized, implants like these could be inserted into cells via a needle and read with a hand held scanner. Heart attacks, cancer…those bastards would never have the chance to sneak up on you again.

Biopsies, the standard method for testing clumps of cells for cancer, is an invasive procedure. Mild heart attacks can go unnoticed or ignored, but still leave behind serious damage that could later lead to death. What is needed in both cases is a method of safely and reliably monitoring the body, preferably from the inside where signals are stronger. That’s why the MIT implants are so ingenious. They can detect small changes in cells and relate that information to a medical professional without having to be removed. Developed by Cima and his team, graduate student Christophoros Vassiliou was able to get the devices small enough to fit inside a biopsy needle. You can inject them into the tissue you want to monitor. Once there, they not only can warn you of dangerous changes, they can help you directly control the treatment of patients so that their therapy matches their current needs. Cima describes this further in the following video:

The United States is running the risk of suffering a major terrorist attack at the hands of Libyan proxies because of its military intervention in Libya to overthrown dictator Moammar Gadhafi, according to Rep Peter King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

King told The Hill that he backs the multinational campaign to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya, but he warns of retribution from Gadhafi, who has a long history of terrorist activity.

“In the long term, it is [in U.S. national security interests], but we also have to be concerned about terrorist attacks by Libya, either in the United States or more likely in Europe,” King told The Hill. “We have to realize that the risk of attack from Libya is certainly greater now than it was two weeks ago.”

The chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), also noted Gadhafi’s history of terrorism. “In assessing U.S. security interests and objectives, the president must also keep in mind Gadhafi’s attacks on Western targets resulting in the deaths of Americans in the 1980s,” she said in a statement Sunday.

On CNN’s “Reliable Sources” show on Sunday, host Howard Kurtz asked: “One major question about the assault on Libya, what happened to the media’s skepticism?” He’s right, but his comparison to the war in Iraq was wrong. The correct parallel is President Bill Clinton’s illegal and unconstitutional military intervention in the civil war in Kosovo, then a province of Serbia. Serbia, like Libya today, did not present a threat to the U.S., but in both cases Democratic presidents went to war with those nations anyway, in order to strengthen international organizations.

What the media are missing is the fact that Obama’s war on Libya has no basis in law or the U.S. Constitution. He has decided to wage this war on his own with the authorization of the United Nations, not the U.S. Congress.
The Washington Times has it right in an editorial headlined “Obama’s illegal war. Congress, not the U.N., should authorize force against Libya,” the paper said, “Removing Moammar Gadhafi from power would probably advance the cause of freedom, but the United Nations has no legal authority to take a step of this magnitude. By bowing to the will of the U.N. Security Council, President Obama is diluting the sovereign power of the United States.”

Do Jews have a future in an increasingly Muslim Europe? Often explored by Daniel Pipes, this question recently drew a disconcerting answer from prominent Dutch politician Frits Bolkestein, who opined on the grim choices facing visible (e.g., Orthodox) Jews in his nation:

The former EU commissioner says there is no future for this group in the Netherlands because of “the anti-Semitism among Dutchmen of Moroccan descent, whose numbers keep growing.”

He feels that this group of Jews should encourage their children to emigrate to either the United States or Israel, because he has little confidence in the effectiveness of the government’s proposals for fighting anti-Semitism.

Bolkestein’s remarks echo those of Benjamin Jacobs, the country’s chief rabbi, who told Arutz Sheva in 2010 that “the future for Dutch Jewry is moving to Israel.” Indeed, some Jews are acting. The same news service reported in December that the son of Raphael Evers, another leading Dutch rabbi, “has announced plans to move to Israel due to anti-Semitism”:

“It’s not that you can’t leave the house, but you need to constantly hide, to be careful,” he explained. He related his own cautionary measures, which include avoiding certain neighborhoods, and hiding his kippah (yalmulke) when walking through areas with a high number of Muslim immigrants

BAGHDAD – The United States has pledged money to help restore the ancient Mesopotamian city of Babylon, the U.S. embassy in Iraq said on Friday, after years of damage by Saddam Hussein, foreign forces and plunder by looters.

Fabled home to the Hanging Gardens, a wonder of the ancient world, and lying in a region historians call the cradle of civilisation, Babylon was damaged during the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam.

Looters ransacked the ancient site about 85 miles (135 km) south of Baghdad in and after 2003. Before the invasion, Saddam had made ham-fisted attempts at reconstruction using new bricks bearing his name, and he built a kitsch palace overlooking it.

The United States has pledged nearly $700,000 (461,692 pounds) for the site.

“Babylon stands out among Iraq’s rich contributions to humanity and “The Future of Babylon” project exemplifies the American people’s commitment to the preservation of human heritage,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement.

Nine years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators.

The system, by far the largest and most technologically sophisticated in the nation’s history, collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.

The government’s goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, which is in charge of terrorism investigations in the United States.

Other democracies – Britain and Israel, to name two – are well acquainted with such domestic security measures. But for the United States, the sum of these new activities represents a new level of governmental scrutiny.

This week, an American blogger gave thanks for the First Amendment, after learning about restrictions on free speech in Canada.

As a Canadian, I can assure you that speech is indeed far less “free” up here than it is in the United States. That’s one reason I enjoy listening to (and writing about) American conservative talk radio.

It’s a good thing I don’t call in to talk radio, though. A disturbing news story paints a troubling portrait of our province, Newfoundland. World famous as the earthy, generous folks who sheltered strangers stranded at Gander Airport on Sept. 11, it seems even our notoriously politically incorrect “Newfies” aren’t immune from free speech “chill.”

The National Post reports on “a worrying trend in the province, where people who call in to talk radio shows to air their complaints about the government end up getting calls from [their elected officials] or their deputies chastising them for their comments.”

A report which documents the United States government’s Nazi-hunting operation has concluded that intelligence officials created a “safe haven” in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II.

The New York Times reported this past weekend about the 600-page report, which was written four years ago but which the U.S. Justice Department has tried to keep under wraps. The report, which catalogs the work of lawyers, historians and investigators at the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations (O.S.I.), which was created in 1979 to deport Nazis, provides new evidence about more than two dozen of some of the most notorious Nazi cases of the last three decades.

There was an interesting article in The Jerusalem Post last week entitled, “Blair says peace within a year is a real possibility.” The former Prime Minister of England and presently the Quartet envoy was recently quoted saying. What’s his reason for such optimism? “People want peace” and “President Obama has made the issue an absolute priority.” Ok, that seems well thought out. My only questions are which people is he speaking about and with those nutty Ayatollahs going nuclear, why are, what I call the “piece talks” the most pressing matter on our illustrious leader’s mind?

Mahmoud Abbas, the peacemaker of Achilles Lauro fame told the Press on Sunday that he’s out of the negotiations until all “settlement” construction is stopped but would not end discussions with the Americans. Discussions with the Americans? Other than additional surrender terms to pressure Israel with, what else could they be discussing? That dear folks is the crux of the matter.

These talks are nothing more than an apologetic President hell bent upon extending the hand of peace to the Islamic world at any cost including the security of Israel. A hand as we’ve seen time and again being thrust back into his face. Fearful of confronting the tantamount issue of the day, Iran, he masks his lack of leadership by making the Israeli/Palestinian conflict his main priority. According to published reports, Obama is groveling and literally offering the kitchen sink in military and political goodies to Netanyahu for a 60 day continuance of the building moratorium. At the same time, according to Benny Avni, in an article entitled, “Peace Malpractice” written in the New York Post, the President is purportedly offering Abbas “U.S. acceptance that the border of the future Palestinian state should be based largely on the 1949 armistice line,” not upon the post 1967 demarcation where settlements currently exist. Why is he doing this? What’s it to him? How is forcing the only democracy in the Middle East to withdraw to untenable borders in the best interest of United States?

“We’re not talking about corruption in the sense of breaking the law,” she said. “We’re talking about a sense that the system is corrupted by these practices. There’s an integrity deficit.”
David Graham

The United States has dropped out of the “top 20” in a global league table of least corrupt nations, tarnished by financial scandals and the influence of money in politics, Transparency International said on Tuesday.

Somalia was judged the most corrupt country, followed by Myanmar and Afghanistan at joint second-worst and then by Iraq, in the Berlin-based watchdog TI’s annual corruption perceptions index (CPI).

The United States fell to 22nd from 19th last year, with its CPI score dropping to 7.1 from 7.5 in the 178-nation index, which is based on independent surveys on corruption